The changes, approved Tuesday in a 5 to 4 vote by directors at the Department of Health, seek to severely limit patients’ access to a wide range of cannabis products. Specifically, the new provisions: prohibit the sale of herbal cannabis at licensed dispensaries; require dispensaries to have a licensed pharmacist on staff; impose arbitrary THC potency thresholds on various cannabis-infused products; and mandate that dispensary managers obtain at least four hours of continuing education training each calendar year. Qualified patients will still be permitted to grow their own medical marijuana flowers.

The Oklahoma State Medical Association, which opposed the passage of SQ 788, lobbied for many of the amendments. Governor Fallin also was a vocal critic of the initiative campaign.

NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano criticized the changes. “Government officials are not acting in good faith. Not only are they undermining the will of the voters, but they are violating the spirit of the law in a manner that will be detrimental to the very patients this measure was intended to protect.”

NORML has long argued that patients should not be limited solely to non-inhaled forms of cannabis because these alternative formulations possess delayed onset and their effects are far less predictable than those of herbal cannabis. Further, restricting patients’ access to herbal cannabis limits their exposure to the multitude of synergistically acting therapeutic compounds and terpenes found naturally in the plant, many of which are no longer present in formulations produced following the extraction of individual cannabinoids.